Much like the rest of the world, Turkey is going through a period of rapid and unpredictable social, cultural and political change. This has also spread to the art scene which has seen artists, galleries, biennials and art fairs swiftly adapting to the world around them.
Setting the tone for possible future cooperation, many art events in the city got aligned to coincide with the Istanbul Art Week last September. The events made the most of the international art crowd who got the chance to experience the 12th Contemporary Istanbul art fair, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, and a series of openings and major museum shows all in one week.
Left: Lungiswa Gqunta, Lawn 1, 2016/17 at the 15th Istanbul Bienali. Right: Galeri Artist Istanbul
2016 was not an easy year for Turkey. After a series of attacks around the country’s busiest avenue (Istiklal), followed by an alleged coup and clamp down on certain freedoms, concerns were raised in and outside the country. However, that hasn’t diminished the power and quality of the local art scene — indeed, it seems to have used the unrest as an opportunity to reinvent itself.
Take, for instance, the influx of new young galleries in the Istiklal area, which many businesses abandoned after the attacks in 2016. OJ is one of the defiant new art spaces that’s relocated there. “The Istiklal space that we’re currently in acted as an organic sanctuary due to the fact that it’s this post apocalyptic former European upper class leisure district, an abandoned Istanbul Soho of sorts,” says co-founder and multidisciplinary artist Burkut Kum. “And the very physical safety threats of the area at the time of our arrival such as bombings and so on helped Erdem Cetrez, Mithat Marul and I strengthen our micro utopian and metamodernist plot.”
Left: Ramazan Can, Yukluk, 2017. Right: Emre Yusufi
Another recently opened space is Lastik Project, co-founded by artists Hyun Cho, Tom Fellows and Kerim Zapsu. “Back in July 2017, with the biennial imminent, we saw an opportunity to create something ourselves without the typical restrictions a permanent space can burden you with,” said Fellows. “So, we took on a short term lease and within a month we were hanging our work.” Their group show “Manipulative”, which closes at the end of October, features all three Lastik Project members’ work. Each artist manipulated form, material, context, process and paradigms within their work. While OJ’s group show at the time of Art Week reflected on the “politically stuck and contradictory state of the present-day Earth”, and fantasised about the possibility of relocating to Mars. Curated by Erdem Cetrez, it featured an array of international artists, including Adam Stamp, Andrew Birk, Berk Cakmakci, Bora Akinciturk, Burkut Kum, Emma Stern, Huey Crowley, and Lara Joy Evans.
Lastik Project
Installation view from Paradise on Mats curated by Erdem Cetrez
Art dealing with the current situation (albeit subtly) could also be seen in established galleries and institutions, such as Galeri Artist in Beyoglu and the Sakip Sabanci Museum. The latter will host an Ai Weiwei retrospective, mostly focused on his porcelain work, until January 2018. The Biennial (curated by Berlin-based Elmgreen and Dragset) also addressed the current climate, by reflecting on what a good neighbour and a home can mean.
Likewise, the Contemporary Istanbul art fair also featured art that addressed the sensation of “feeling stuck” felt across the world, and especially in Turkey. Among many of the artworks at Mixer gallery’s booth, Meltem Sahin’s piece stood out. Entitled “in that case”, her piece depicted three individual stylish black figures embracing themselves. Yet the work could only be fully activated when seen through an app that showed them in motion going around and around in a confined space, unable to escape. “I am trying to show that people are scared and not taking action and how that’s become normalised,” the young artist and recent MA graduate said about the fact the art scene had split into artists who speak out and those who choose not to. “I used augmented reality to show what’s going on inside people’s heads.”
Mixer Gallery, Meltem Sahin, in that case, 2017. Mixed media on wood, AR
Contemporary Instanbul isn’t only giving a platform to many local galleries and young artists with distinct practices and opinions. It also has a fairly international outlook for a regional fair, featuring galleries from all over the world. The 60 exhibitors included Dubai’s Andakulova Gallery, Accra’s Gallery 1957, London’s Victoria Miro, Bucharest’s Nicodim Gallery, New York’s Marlborough Gallery, Shanghai’s ACAF, and Tbilisi’s Project Artbeat.
Some of the local galleries included returnees ALAN, X-Ist, PG ART Gallery, Zilberman, Dirimart. Every year, the fair also offers special conditions to young galleries such as Gaia and KRANK. This year also offered plenty of novelties. Contemporary Instanbul founder Ali Gureli appointed Iranian-born and London-based collector Kamiar Maleki as the director; under his guidance, the fair got redesigned, and it offered the city its first sculpture park. In addition, it also helped build a school for Syrian refugees.
Left: Project Artbeat, Maka Batiashvili, Rings, 2017 Right: Gallery 1957, Gerald Chukwuma, Since Tomorrow Will Come, 2017
“I really want this fair to be a family affair, that’s why it has this particular number of exhibitors,” said Maleki. “I go around the fair making sure that new galleries get to know more established ones and I only invite galleries that I know can sell here.”
Charitable intentions aside, the fair had its eyes firmly set on one prize: to turn the city into the next global art destination. It’s easy to see why. At 2am on a Sunday, Istiklal is still heaving with all sorts of people eating and drinking, the metropole keeps expanding, the high-rises grow taller, Gulf money is omnipresent. And despite the many hurdles, the art scene is finding opportunities that may arise from the tension. “We certainly believe there is a lot of potential in Istanbul,” says Kum. “Our young scene which craves new dialogues on contemporary art and rejects romanticising the political backdrop is also contributing to that.” And because of all the above, it might just happen.